As we write the rules…

Contacting a family member for assistance in a criminal investigation isn’t a game.

People’s lives are changed, potentially for all time, when they learn that a family member — however distant — may be a suspect in a criminal case.

So how do we begin to write the rules for those who are already playing in the criminal case sandbox?

That was the issue that came up earlier this week, when genealogist Nicka Smith was horrified by an email a cousin has received asking the cousin to assist in a police investigation.

The email from a “professional genetic genealogist” identified two DNA kits the cousin managed at the third-party database GEDmatch as related in the range of third to fourth cousins to a male suspect in “a string of violent crimes.” It asked for identification of the test-takers’ parents and grandparents, if deceased, and their relationship to a third tested person whose kit wasn’t managed by this cousin. It ended with an offer to help with any family mystery the cousin was working on.1

Nicka’s reaction was uniformly negative:

The person who wrote the email claimed to be a “professional genetic genealogist.” Not an actual law enforcement official who is trained in investigative work. The same person requested the names of the parents and grandparents of the kits my cousin managed without providing any insurance regarding how this information was going to be used. Yes, literally. Without a subpoena, a warrant. Nothing. My cousin was just supposed to provide this information out of the goodness of their heart. There was no room for discussion on how law enforcement even believed they had the right person to begin with – just give me what you know.

Then, at the end there was upsell attempt…after telling my cousin that they’re related to a criminal.2

She concluded: “we AS A COMMUNITY, need to gather our collective edges. Our curiosity and knowledge lead to some amazing tools when it comes to genetic genealogy, but THIS? THIS? This is NOT ok. Not at all. We can try to catch all the killers we want, but we are doing nothing but “stop and frisk” to the relatives of people when we send messages like this to folks. So, let me go ahead and start the real dialogue on this because we are PAST needing it.”3

The Legal Genealogist couldn’t agree more than we need a real dialogue about how to handle these cases… but isn’t quite so negative about this particular contact.

Here’s why — what I think is good about the email:

• The email contact clearly states that the genealogist is working on a criminal case. There’s no attempt to finesse it — no subterfuge, no “hi, we might be related” misrepresentations.

• The email recognizes that the recipient may not be comfortable sharing information “based on the fact that it’s a law enforcement case.”

• The email makes it clear that the genealogist doesn’t need “any information on living people at all” — but see the negative on this below.

On the other hand, there are some things that I don’t like about the email:

• There doesn’t seem to be a recognition that this really is a request for information that impacts living people. The test takers are going to have to be told about this — and you can bet your bottom dollar that it’s going to cause confusion and angst and possibly direct suspicion at members of the family, however distant, who are absolutely blameless.

• Likewise, the email asks for confirmation of the connection to a third test taker who, presumably, is yet another living person.

So… where do we go with this? How do we begin to develop rules, or ethical norms, for these sorts of cases and these sorts of contacts?

The three concepts in the image here have to be at the center of what we do as genealogists:

We have to be honest, we have to disclose, and we have to build and honor the trust placed in us.

“Genealogist’s Code of Ethics,” Board for Certification of Genealogists (https://bcgcertification.org/ : accessed 2 Dec 2018). Note that this section of the Code is new; it was adopted in October 2018. ↩

15 Comments

I’m glad you wrote about this, Judy; in these early days of genetic genealogy, there’s more uncharted territory than maps to go around. Transparency, coupled with the willingness to accept “no” for an answer when reaching out to others, is mandatory for anyone working with DNA—professional or otherwise.

Being a retired policeman I think that using genetic genealogy is the best thing to come to violent crime solving since the discovery of the uniqueness of fingerprints. However I agree it needs to be done right and transparent. Policeman world wide are notorious for coming up with “short cuts” that end up being bogged down in the courts for years. The short cuts are often approved by DA attorneys so one can just blame the cops. The lack of transparency that bothers me in this case is that this “Professional Genetic Genealogist” was clearly working as the “agent” of and in cooperation with a Law Enforcement Agency. That information should have been disclosed up front along with contact information to the responsible “investigator”. It is no difference then verifying a new DNA cousin. In this case, who are you, who do you work for, how do I contact the person in charge. In this kind of case I most likely would ask for personal contact, not just email. The up sell of “I will help you with your tree” I find distasteful. I And remember this investigative technique is new to the police also and they are still learning. Our feed back can help educate them.

Genetic Genealogy Standard no. 6 says: Genealogists only test with companies that respect and protect the privacy of testers. However, genealogists understand that complete anonymity of DNA tests results can never be guaranteed.

I think that the genealogical community will need to think long and hard about whether or not this standard applies to GEDmatch. I personally have removed all of my kits because I don’t know where any of this is going to go.

I don’t really understand this, to be honest. You should remove kits you administer for other people, but with Gedmatch, you have full control over what information you share. You can use a throwaway email address and an alias, that you use for nothing else, so you can’t be found on a google search. If you want to, you can mark your kit as a research kit and no one but you can see it. No one has the ability to download your DNA data from Gedmatch (including you, once you’ve uploaded it), and Gedmatch say your raw data is deleted once it has been analysed and turned into a tokenised form. So I’m afraid I really don’t understand the concerns, and why the ability to bring closure to victims of serious crime (and enable the ID of longstanding Does) is seen as something bad. Happy to be educated, of course.

The reality is that we could bring closure to many many victims of crimes if police were allowed to enter any home and search willy-nilly through the private belongings of family members of suspects without being bothered with niceties like probable cause and search warrants. But we’ve made the societal decision that we’d rather protect people from unbridled police power to search and seize, even though it costs us our ability to close some criminal cases. Searching genealogical databases for evidence without any oversight or control by the courts poses the same long-term risks, and we have to decide how we want to handle it. That’s what this discussion is about.

I am glad you wrote this Judy. Being a retired LEO I come at this from a different view than others may have. However, being honest and having integrity are paramount. I would never remove my tests from GedMatch because they might be used in a criminal case. In fact, I would help law enforcement in any way, to bring justice to the victims and their families. I just hope that the people involved at Parabon and other companies don’t ruin what has been a wonderful way for all genealogists to identity and connect with family. I wish everything wasn’t so complicated.

It will come as no surprise that I have profound concerns about the complete lack of legal oversight involved in using genetic information. I have no confidence that law enforcement agencies or agents can be trusted to honestly or fairly investigate violent crimes. I have seen more than enough evidence that LEOs will use any tool available to coerce, intimidate, or harass citizens. The idea that my genetic information could be used decades hence to target as yet unborn relatives is extremely disturbing.

After having read the entire message posted on Nicka’s website (see footnote 1 for URL), and thinking about the number of spam I receive from bank impersonators and other fraudsters on a daily basis, I can say for certain that I would never respond to that message and would instead add the sender to the spam filter.

Why? Because the sender did not provide any informstion from which the recipient might be able to independently verify that the sender is who he or she claims to be and is indeed working for a legitimate law enforcement agency. At the very least I would want to know the name and address of the agency, and the name of the officer in charge of the investigation, so that I could look up that agency and contact them at their published address or telephone number, report that I had received this message and ask whether they are conducting any such investigation as has been described in the message and whether the person named as the officer in charge actually works for them.

If all that information checked out, I’d have a lot more questions I’d want to ask before supplying any personally identifying information whatsoever about anyone (not even relationships to deceased relatives) without first running it by the individuals involved to make sure they were OK with that, even if they had already given their written consent at the time their kits were uploaded. After all, it is one thing to agree to something on general principle when it’s an abstract concept, but quite another thing when the abstract turns into a concrete challenge a person never believed they would ever really have to face.

But then, I’m one of those folks who never uploaded anything to GEDmatch to begin with, precisely because I was never comfortable with the site’s level of privacy protection.

I agree with G – I would have assumed this was most likely a scammer trying to harvest information and would never have responded, for the reasons G describes. Also, there is no obligation to provide any kind of information. Let this “professional genetic genealogist” figure it out for themselves.

I have zero concerns about the user of Gedmatch in criminal investigations. These cases still need to be investigated properly, and it IS possible to use Gedmatch and protect your anonymity. I wonder how careful a lot of people who moan about Gedmatch are careful about the rest of their personal information; it’s disturbingly easy to uncover a lot of personal information on the internet, which can be used to serious harm.

All that said… I don’t think the letter is that bad, and to be honest it struck me as fake, either on the part of the blogger, or the sender, I’m not sure which. The major error by the blogger is in moaning about the fact that the genealogist who contacted her cousing was not a law enforcement professional trained in ‘investigative work’. Well, no, a forensic and/or genetic genealogist is a genealogist, not a law enforcement professional. I’d be rather concerned if a law enforcement professional was contacting someone through gedmatch about something DNA specific because I would want to trust that an actual genetic genealogist was analysing my DNA, not a law enforcement professional. That said, although a forensic genealogist can’t disclosure exactly what cases they are working on, due to the nature of the work, they can provide a mechanism for someone to check they are who they say that are, and that have creds. Nor do I believe they would outright ask for specific information on living people, it would be more usual to ask if they are willing to share any family history (or a family tree if they believe the person may have this info on somewhere like Ancestry, but private), sometimes relating to a specific location if common ancestor locations have been determined from other branches of research. Lastly, I very much doubt an experienced genetic genealogist working with law enforcement would suggest she can help the contact with his or her research, that just smacks of rank amateur at the very best!

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